This is great advice. Threatening a lawsuit sounds extreme, but with customer service at major corporations this is absolutely the sure fire way to get some action. I work for a major retirement firm and if a client so much as utters the words lawsuit, attorney, or sue, we escalate that and involve plan managers immediately who basically go out of their way to resolve the issue.
Ok, I had a somewhat comparable situation as you recently. Here’s what happened to me and how I got the feedback removed:
- Guy bought a $3 card, and I ship it PWE
- ~3 weeks later, card still hasn’t arrived, so buyer files an ‘item not received’ case
- I respond to the case asking if the buyer is fine waiting a week to see if it still arrives, and that I’ll fully refund him if it doesn’t
- The guy agrees
- 4 days later, the guy escalates the case to eBay without sending me any sort of message/anything. When I see this, I immediately refund him, obviously.
- Guy leaves me a negative feedback saying “only received refund after a lengthy wait”
So I appealed the feedback, since I have in writing the guy agreeing to wait a week to see if it arrives. Just 4 days later, the buyer escalated the case to eBay without telling me that the card hadn’t arrived (and if he did I obviously would’ve immediately refunded him). And I refunded him within a few minutes of the case being escalated. Of course, eBay denied the appeal that I filed. So I called up eBay, and explained the situation to the customer service person. She agreed that the buyer’s feedback was absurd and that, objectively, I did everything correctly. She removed the feedback immediately.
The only potential issue with your case is that there’s not an objective way to prove that the buyer is wrong about the card being fake. For all anyone else knows, it was fake (obviously it wasn’t, but they have no way of knowing that). But if you get a reasonable customer service rep on the phone, I don’t see any reason why they can’t see your 1000+ positive feedback and realize that you’re telling the truth. And since it’s your first negative feedback (as mine was for me), I believe that you should be able to get someone to remove it.
What number did you call to get eBay on the phone? I keep calling their customer service number and keep getting a recording.
I can’t get anyone on the phone, so I sent eBay an email essentially saying this. Hoping for the best.
Given the volume of eBay sales I do my phone number goes directly to Merchant Support which is why I say lower volume sellers will have a hard time getting a hold of the right person more so than actual difficulty regarding the removal.
Who’s the buyer?
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